The more I listen to great recordings (and hopefully make great recordings myself) the more I’m beginning to see how the acoustic guitar is sneaking its way into everything. In fact, on my band’s most recent EP recording I ended up laying down acoustic guitar on all 6 songs, when none of them had a single acoustic guitar part written. Why?
Acoustic Guitars Are Natural Enhancers
My band has primarily a melodic rock oriented sound that is guitar driven. And when I say guitar I really mean electric guitar, because in my humble opinion, electrics are simply way more fun to play. So in both the writing and recording process for our most recent album, we stuck to electrics for the entire project. No acoustics necessary.
As we wrapped up recording a few weeks ago I decided to listen through the songs a few more times to see if they needed anything extra. I discovered one song that had a cool picking part that was getting lost in all the overdrive and distortion. So I restrung my acoustic, miked it up, and replayed the same part overtop the original electric. The result? I could both hear AND feel my electric picking part and it just sounded better!
Brining In That Percussive Element
This process continued as I listened intently to the remaining songs. I would literally double some parts with my acoustic, no new parts, and each time the percussive element of the songs would come out in my electrics (enhanced by the acoustic) and it just made everything pop. It sounds simple, but what was OK before, was really coming to life by merely layering an additional acoustic guitar part overtop.
Acoustics Are All Over The Place
I found this phenomenon to be true all over the radio and my iTunes library. Rock, hip hop, you name it. Acoustic guitars are sneaking their way into major recordings that aren’t typically acoustic instrument driven. If you think of them as a natural EQ or enhancer then you’re getting somewhere. It seems other producers have caught on (this is nothing new mind you) and are using them to bring out the best of their tracks, and you can too!
Comments
I’m sure you know also about high-stringing and then doubling acoustic parts. People even use acoustic guitar (high strung) to make acoustic guitar pop in the mix.
This is a nice tip. I also found that acoustic guitar brings in some sort of high frequency lightness or freshness to the song, I like to add upon it a touch of ping pong delay.
The Wechter High Strung Nashville guitar is incredible in mixes.
Graham, great insight. I too discovered this not long ago by fortuitous accident and couldn’t believe the impact a well-placed acoustic track would have on mixes that didn’t originally call for them. I’ve started doubling picked clean electric parts with a Nashville Tuning underneath, and even doubling heavier tracks with an acoustic and using the acoustic track as my reverb send. The additional high frequency and harmonic content makes all the difference. Isn’t it amazing there’s so much left to discover and learn after all these years of thinking we have it “right.”
Good tip! By any chance could you give a few references to which songs you’ve heard this technique used?
Val Garay uses a thing called a “Guitar Swarm” which is a brunch of stereo acoustic guitars recorded using different chord positions. He uses it underneath to drive choruses.
try using a modified version of grahams recorderman mic setup on the acoustic guitar. one mic is pointed at the 12th fret about 6 inches to a foot away and the other mic is looking over the guitarist right shoulder at about ear level. the theory is it is picking up what the guitarist hears. then in the mix blend the two tracks. also it helps to have a really good acoustic guitar you just can’t make a 400.00 seagull sound like a vintage martin i have tried. in short get it right at the source.